“You left. You wanted ice cream,” I say. It’s not an accusation, it’s the truth.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Eleanor says. “Marla woke up with nightmares because you went in there alone. She almost went and got Mom. Not okay! Didn’t you listen to Astrid? Didn’t you hear her say that we are maybe all supposed to be in there together? Why’d you have to go and ruin that?”
“I didn’t ruin anything! I just gave it a try, to see if mine was special too. So we wouldn’t miss out. We can all go in it now!” I say. Maybe I am better at standing up to my sisters when I’m half awake and partly dreaming, because my voice is clearer and stronger than ever before.
“We trusted you, and you went ahead and did this anyway. We should never have let you in to begin with,” Eleanor says. A small part of me believes her, that I was being bad when I tried out my own closet without them, but then I remember all the summers that they’ve been going into their closet without me. And the last few weeks when they’ve left me alone in the drafty kitchen at breakfast, wondering if Mom has coffee or wine in her mug.
Even the way they disappeared to get ice cream was wrong. If they didn’t want me to go in alone, they shouldn’t have left me alone. That’s what I’m thinking, even if those aren’t the exact words that get out.
“It’s my closet,” I say. “Marla shouldn’t have told you, anyway. She had no right to tell you. I thought she was on my team.” Eleanor shakes her head like I don’t understand anything at all, and Astrid squeezes my foot, which either means it’s okay or stop talking. I stop talking.
“We’re all on the same team. We’re on team Don’t Get Hurt in Some Scary, Unknown Closet That We Know Nothing About,” Eleanor says. “It could be like mine, or it could be something all its own.” She is speaking too loudly for midnight. Astrid tries to shush her, but Astrid is not really the shushing type, so it comes out less like a shush and more like a sigh. “The closets aren’t all good, you know,” Eleanor goes on. Her eyes are slits, and she has the same look on her face she used when we told scary stories last summer using flashlights and whisper voices.
“Don’t freak her out,” Astrid says in her very quietest voice.
“There have to be rules! Her closet might be bad like yours!” Eleanor practically yells. I shush her too. My shush comes out more like a regular shush, but Eleanor doesn’t like it, and she wrinkles her nose in my direction.
“Whose closet is bad?” I say. They said the other closets didn’t work, not that the other closets were something to be really, truly scared of.
“You think we’re telling you more secrets now?” Eleanor says. She’s too close to shouting, and if she doesn’t quiet down, Mom or Dad might wake up. “We’re wishing we could un-tell you secrets. We’re not about to tell you or Marla more now.”
“You said Marla and I aren’t a team anyway,” I say. But I always knew we were, and I feel a little bit glad to not be the only one on the outside.
“Enough with the teams.” Eleanor rolls her eyes, because the twins have never understood why Marla and I would be jealous of their automatic allegiance. Eleanor and Astrid take it for granted, how special they are together, how bonded they are, how full and bright and shiny their private world together seems.
In some ways, Eleanor and Astrid’s twinship is its own magic closet, filled with mysterious things no one else can see or experience.
“Show me what happened in there,” Eleanor says. I’m not able to argue with her serious tone, and I think maybe if I tell her all about it, she’ll be excited with me instead of disappointed and angry. So I start describing the lightbulb and the orange glow.
The warmth.
“No,” Eleanor says, walking to the closet and opening the door with a flourish. “Show me.” She steps into the closet, turns on the light, and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s sweating. I wonder if it’s because she’s nervous about the closet or if she had a Mom encounter when she came back from seeing her secret boyfriend. Most of Eleanor’s sweating is Mom-related. Astrid and I follow her, and I shut the door behind me.
“What did you bring in with you earlier?” Astrid says.